In an effort to find out about her heritage, artist Florence Lymburner, née Chernoff, went on a trip hoping to find out more about her Doukhobor ancestors.

“I went to this area in Turkey to a city called Kars, which is in a remote area in Eastern Turkey,” recounts Lymburner.

“Being of Doukhobor heritage, I wanted to know where my grandmother had come from.”

Lymburner took photographs of her journey to Kars and released a pictorial diary of sorts entitled, Kars Doukhobor Villages.

“It is a coloured photo book of present day Turkish-Moslem life in [five] villages and shows some Doukhobor artifacts that were left behind when the people came to Canada,” she explained.

There were six villages in present day Turkey, which were known to be where the Doukhobor’s originated from, according to Lymburner, and she sought them out.

It was no easy task, given all the time that had passed and the changes that had occurred over that time.

“I was maybe the first Doukhobor to ever locate these villages as such because they had been re-named with Turkish names,” she said.

“The locations were not really known.”

The local artist wasn’t able to locate all six villages but she did manage to find five — Pokrovka (present-day Porsuklu), Troitskoya (Mescitli), Gorelovka (Kuyucuk), Spasovka (Sahnalar) and Terpeniya (Karahan) — with the village of Kirilovka the only one to elude her.

Though Turkish culture had almost consumed the five villages, Lymburner was able to find remnants of Doukhobor-related items.

“I was looking for names, some signs, anything that looked Doukhobor, so that was the adventure,” she said.

“I was able to find things like a couple of plows, a couple of houses as well as a mill and it still had some working parts in the mill that were made by the Doukhobor people.”

“I had always heard about Kars but either no one had been there or the folks that had been there had never located the villages as such,” Lymburner said.

And with the exception of one village, that’s exactly what the Doukhobor artist did.

The book is available to be viewed at the USCC office and the Brilliant Cultural Centre and copies of the book can be ordered at the aforementioned places as well.